Individual Enterprises are constantly seeking ways to increase efficiencies and reduce expenses in positive economic periods and especially in poor economic periods. This drive for efficiency can be seen during the continuing escalation of costs from 2005-2010 coupled with the financial meltdown of late 2007-2009. This poor economic period created a tremendous demand for efficiency in many businesses. Efficiency, in this case, is meant, “to provide the same or greater quality of products and services at a lower cost to the enterprise, therefore stabilizing or diminishing the cost to their constituency (for example, consumer, student, guest, member, patron, patient, clients, citizen, taxpayer, etc.).” By diminishing the cost of products and services that enterprises utilize and configure to satisfy the demands of their paying constituencies, enterprises, comprising any entity that may purchase goods or services to convert into another product or service to be delivered to a constituent, and may include institutions, businesses, governments and the like, may offer higher quality products and services at a lower cost to their constituencies.
In the United States, by way of example only, the Hospitality (clubs, hotels, resorts, cruise lines, etc.), Education (Universities, Colleges, and other educational facilities, public and private), HealthCare (Hospitals, Nursing Home, senior assisted living, etc.), and Banking and Financial industries including Banks such as; Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan/Chase, UBS, etc. financial institutions such as; Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, Greenhill and Co., etc: including cooperatives of commercial building tenants, a block of commercial building tenants, blocks of commercial building tenants, a metropolitan area of tenants, a city of tenants and even a country of tenants, etc. . . . ) conservatively procure a combined $3.2 trillion of products and services each year. These industries are comprised of tens of thousands of enterprises that consume finished goods and services in order to in turn provide their product or service to their constituencies. These goods and services comprise the crucial components necessary for the various operations (enterprises) to execute their respective businesses and satisfy the needs of their constituencies (guests/patrons/members/students/patients/clients/etc. . . . ). The products and services that the enterprises procure can range from as little as 5%-75% or more of the operation's gross receipts. Any other industries may have similar product and procurement costs, and may similarly benefit from the various embodiments of the invention.
Mitigating operational, product, and service costs is a core objective in depressed and booming economies alike. There has always been pressure on management to lower costs while still maintaining the same level of quality. While this is especially heightened during difficult financial times such as our current economic environment, this pressure on management does not dissipate when the economy is robust. The financial meltdown of late 2007-present (effectuating record declines in revenues, endowment funds, state funding, government funding, and assistance, and rising medical costs, etc. . . . ), coupled with rising operating costs, has put immense pressure on industries' management to restructure forecasts, budgets, etc. Challenges to operators have not been limited strictly to financial pressure. The last decade has forged a socio-economic transformation from a convergence of economic and behavioral changes of guests, patrons, members, students, clients, taxpayers, and patients, etc., who are more demanding than ever. This value conscience transformation is expected to continue into the foreseeable future.
Operators of individual enterprises. communities, municipalities, cities, states, nations, governments, etc. may be limited in their ways of mitigating costs, and many reductions in costs tend to create additional problems. For instance, reducing an enterprise's labor expense essentially diminishes service and negatively impacts the quality of product and/or service that an enterprise offers. An enterprise's attempt to cut quality and services and/or increasing prices (or taxes, levies) challenges its value propositions and can cause a decline, discontinuation of use, disgruntled constituencies, and possibly even social unrest.
The best way to reduce costs is to maintain or improve the quality of products and services that an enterprise procures, but at lower prices to the operator, government, etc. Several factors currently prevent single (or even multi-unit) industries' enterprises from achieving true and sustainable savings in procurement costs and quality of purchases. First, the core competency of management in these industries is predicated on delivering the ultimate in consumer (constituency) satisfaction and not in efficient procurement methodologies. Second, even skilled and experienced procurement managers cannot simply bypass the mainstream supply chain. This supply chain contributes to the multiple-layered infrastructure and distribution costs that are unavoidable to the end users (e.g. hotels, clubs, resorts, cruise lines, hospitals, colleges and universities, banks and financial institutions, and even governments) under the current systems.
It would be therefore beneficial to provide an improved method and system that allows for the delivery and procurement of such goods and services in an efficient manner, and that overcomes the drawbacks of the prior art.